Her Majesty the Pastry Cream

The queen of pastry: PASTRY CREAM

Over the past few decades, creams have seen remarkable growth in their role as the star element of sweet preparations. The arrival of new recipes such as crémeux and namelaka, alongside whipped ganaches, mousses and Bavarian creams with ever more refined and exotic flavours, has propelled this extraordinary base forward in leaps and bounds. As I said in previous posts, if sponge cake is the “puffed-up King” of pastry, the cream is undoubtedly its Queen. 

Pastry cream (crème pâtissière) is normally made by blending four basic ingredients: milk, sugar, egg yolks and starch. These four ingredients have remained virtually unchanged, in both presence and proportion, ever since its origins — all to preserve the essential balance of a product that can be firm, for fried creams, or extremely fluid, for crème anglaise. It should be said, though, that the cream’s neutral nature allows for endless other flavourings, running from sweet to bitter to sour: from chocolate to coffee, from hazelnut to strawberry and fruit in general (exotic fruits included), from citrus to aromatic wines such as Marsala.

Making pastry cream is in itself very simple, but the problems that often crop up, even in professional kitchens without a cream cooker, are:

• a burnt product, caused by too high a flame or by very poor stirring during cooking; 
• the formation of lumps, due to incorrect mixing of the solid ingredients (starch, sugar and yolks), to weak, half-hearted stirring while the cream thickens during cooking, or to leaving it uncovered as it cools;
• loss of body and the formation of liquid (syneresis), due to too low a cooking temperature or overly prolonged cooking;

A well-balanced, well-cooked pastry cream will present:

1. a smooth, non-gelatinous surface, glossy and delicate in colour;
2. an even, creamy texture, free from syneresis (loss of liquid);
3. a neutral flavour — not acidic, fresh, with a light aroma of vanilla or lemon.

Now let’s look at the characteristics of its ingredients:

Milk: this is the ingredient that provides the moist fraction, and with it the cream’s softness. Thanks to its small amount of fat, it also contributes flavour. Fresh milk is preferable to long-life UHT milk: having undergone high-temperature sterilisation, the latter leaves an overcooked aftertaste in the cream. Milk can be replaced with water, for a lighter, less flavourful cream; with fortified wines such as Marsala or port, for creams like zabaglione; or with high-moisture fruit purées such as strawberry, raspberry, blueberry and so on…

Fresh cream: it raises the quality of the cream’s flavour because it is richer in fat than milk (milk 4% fat, cream 35% fat). Making the cream with fresh cream is also recommended for products destined for freezing: cream reduces syneresis, that is, the water the cream loses as it thaws.

Egg yolk: it gives the cream flavour and body. Flavour, thanks to the fats it contains; body, because it starts to set when heated above 65 °C. And thanks to its lecithin, it makes the cream all the creamier. One point of the utmost importance: the cream must never be cooked above 85 °C — beyond that temperature the yolk begins to break down and release sulphur, leaving you with a cream that smells of overcooked egg.

Sugar: white beet caster sugar is normally used. Its purpose is to raise the coagulation temperature of the yolks — besides, of course, adding sweetness. It can be partly replaced with other sweeteners, such as raw cane sugar or honey, to give the cream’s flavour a distinctive note, up to a maximum of 10% of the sugar’s weight.

Starch: this is the ingredient that creates the cream’s final consistency: the starch granules dispersed in the liquid fraction, as they heat, gradually hydrate and swell, losing their crystalline structure and forming bonds with the water molecules. The result is less free water and a denser, more viscous cream. The most commonly used starches are:

1. rice starch = gives a velvety, glossy cream; it cooks at 84–85 °C 
2. cornstarch = gives a slightly gelatinous, semi-glossy cream; it cooks at 82 °C
3. wheat flour = gives a gluey, dull cream with no velvet to it. Pastry cream made with wheat flour also tends to turn rancid faster, because of the fats the flour contains. CAREFUL: cooking at 90–92 °C gives a cream with an excessive egg flavour, while failing to reach 90 °C leaves a floury taste.
4. potato starch = best avoided: it gives a gluey cream with no body. Use it only for creams to be baked in the oven.   

Flavourings: vanilla pods and lemon zest above all (always organic or naturally grown, to avoid lemons with treated peel), which enhance the cream’s flavour and gently mask the taste of the yolk.

Salt: a flavour enhancer — added, always in small amounts, it heightens the taste of every ingredient in the cream.

How to make a perfect pastry cream

Finally, we come to the preparation itself. There are various ways of combining the ingredients and then cooking them; in this post we will look at the classic method, which is also the most widely used:

• Start by bringing the milk to the boil, together — optionally — with lemon zest stripped of its bitter white pith. The zest of lemon, or of any other citrus fruit, can go in either grated or in strips; strips, though, will have to be removed from the cream afterwards. Bringing the milk to the boil serves only to speed up the preparation, which would take longer with fridge-cold milk, and to infuse the aroma of the flavouring.
• Separately, combine the yolks and the sugar, mixing them straight away: this prevents the sugar, which is highly hygroscopic (that is, it absorbs moisture), from soaking up the water in the yolks and forming little crystals that will then struggle to dissolve during cooking. 
• Next, add the salt and the vanilla.
• Last comes the starch, which should be sifted to remove any impurities but above all to aerate it, so that it blends more easily with the yolks and sugar. Take care to mix the starch in slowly, because it flies up very easily.
• When the milk boils, pour it straight into the yolk, sugar and starch mixture and stir until everything is well combined.
• Now we come to the most delicate moment of the preparation: the cooking. It can be done directly over a flame, on induction, in a bain-marie or in the microwave. Cooking over a direct heat source such as a flame or induction is best, both for speed and for the final result — the important thing is always to keep the flame or wattage low. Another tip is to stir the cream with a heat-resistant silicone spatula. As we said above, the cream is the thickening, during cooking, of a liquid mixture through the coagulating action of the yolks and the gelling action of the starch. Stirring the cream is absolutely essential: it must be constant and cover the entire surface of the pan, to stop the cream from overcooking and burning on the bottom. What’s more, at 70 °C the cream suddenly goes from liquid to thick; at that moment it is best to stir vigorously for a few seconds, swapping the spatula for a whisk, until the mixture is smooth, uniform and glossy. Cooking can then be finished by going back to stirring with the spatula and bringing the cream to 84 °C.
• Before moving the cream on to cooling and storage, it is advisable to emulsify it for 20 seconds with an immersion blender.
• The cooked, emulsified cream should now be poured into a suitably wide container with low sides and covered with cling film pressed onto its surface. At this point, chill it in the refrigerator to keep it in the best possible condition.

Below you will find four recipes — choose your favourite!

Blog by Enrico Gumirato, pastry chef and trainer.